by Elle James
“Anything?” Declan asked.
“Nothing yet,” Mack responded. He glanced up briefly. “Heard you guys had an interesting day.”
Cole snorted. “To say the least.”
Mack grinned. “Didn’t expect to uncover a politician’s wife cheating with a Russian, did you?”
“No, we didn’t,” CJ said.
“At least it was interesting. I’ve been staring at this screen for over an hour and haven’t found anything nearly as cool as what you guys did.” He returned his attention to the monitor.
CJ crossed the room to look over Mack’s shoulder. “The compound where I was trained was pretty much buried in foliage. It won’t be that easy to spot from the ground or air. Want help?”
“Sure.” Mack pulled another chair close to where he was sitting. “Between you, me and Gus, three sets of eyes ought to be able to find something.” He pointed to the monitor. “The dog trainer who gave us the info has a training facility here.” He pointed to a spot on the screen where trees had been cleared and all that remained was a green grassy area. “He said the facility is off a road a couple of miles from his place to the northwest.”
“What made him go that way?” CJ asked.
“He lost a dog he’d been boarding and went looking with a tracking dog. He found the animal, but also heard a lot of gunfire. When he got up close, he noticed the facility was surrounded by chain-link fence topped with razor-sharp concertina wire.”
“Gunfire could be from a couple of guys out target practicing with pop cans, getting ready for deer season,” Cole said, coming to stand behind CJ.
“Yeah, but they weren’t firing single rounds, they were firing semiautomatic and automatic weapons, from what the dog trainer said.” Mack pointed to the northwest of the dog facility. “The trees are dense here, and there are more hills to hide in.”
CJ leaned closer to the monitor, looking for anything that didn’t fit in, like the straight edge of a roofline or vehicle. The more she looked, the more the green leaves of the trees blended together. Until she came to a dark, rusty line in the middle of a canopy of trees. “There,” she said, pointing to the line. “Is that a corrugated tin roof?”
Mack zoomed in on the image, blowing it up to twice the size on the screen. “Looks like it.”
Following the line of the roof, CJ found another shape that wasn’t natural for a forest, a gray, curved bowl. “Satellite dish?” she said, her brow dipping.
Mack nodded and pointed to another straight line. “That appears to be another building tucked beneath the trees.”
Soon, they’d identified several potential buildings.
Mack picked up a satellite phone and called Gus. “Any way you can get closer to these coordinates?” He gave Gus the numbers and waited.
When Gus finally spoke again, Mack’s brow furrowed. “Got it. So, it’s like the dog trainer said. Did you hear any sounds of gunfire?”
CJ could hear Gus talking, but couldn’t make out the words.
Mack’s gaze met Cole’s. “No sounds. Maybe they’ve moved from that site.” He paused while Gus spoke. “You did? I’d say it’s time to go in and investigate, boots on the ground.”
“We’re in.” Cole glanced across at CJ.
She nodded, her pulse pounding hard against her eardrums. Heading back to where it all began seemed insane, but necessary. They might find the leader of Trinity there, supervising the training of even more Trinity agents. A bunch of babies being led into a life of violence.
If she had any way of getting them out, she would. “Let’s go.”
“We’ll get back with you when we have a plan and timeline,” Mack assured Gus. “Stay low and don’t get caught.” Mack ended the call and turned to Cole. “We need communications equipment, bulletproof vests, weapons and some smoke grenades.”
“Are we going in prepared to shoot kids?” Cole asked.
“No, but we’re going in prepared to defend our lives,” Mack said.
“Who’s going where?” Charlie’s voice sounded from the top of the stairs.
All gazes turned to the woman who funded their little band of brothers.
Charlie Halverson looked like a million bucks. Dressed in a long, silver-beaded, satin-and-lace gown, she looked like royalty as she descended the stairs one step at time.
She glanced around the room. “I thought everyone was headed in for the night.” Her gaze settled on Declan. “And that Declan was going to get some rest.”
“We think we may have found one of Trinity’s training camps,” Mack said.
Charlie moved forward, her eyes widening. “Do I need to stay home tonight and help monitor activities?” she asked.
Declan frowned. “You’re going out?”
“I had an invitation to a special event where the president is scheduled to speak,” Charlie said.
“Charlie, you have to go to the event,” Grace said. “That’s more important.”
“If anything, we could wait to move in on the training camp until another day,” Declan said. “If they’re still using the camp, I doubt they’d get out of there sooner.”
“No.” Charlie held up a hand. “You do what you have to do.”
“But we can’t leave you unprotected. Someone needs to go with you to the event,” Declan insisted. He tried to rise to his feet, but he couldn’t bend over enough to lean forward. Instead he sat back in the lounge chair and winced. “I’ll go with Charlie to the event. As soon as someone helps me out of this chair.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Grace said. “I’ll go with Charlie.”
Declan frowned. “You aren’t trained in hand-to-hand combat and they won’t let you in if you carry a gun.” He glanced around the room, his gaze landing on Roger Arnold, who was just descending the stairs carrying a tray filled with a pitcher and glasses. “Arnold and I will go to the event with Charlie. The rest of the team will check out the compound. If you determine the place is a Trinity training camp, you are not to engage. You will fall back and call in the FBI, national guard and whoever else we need to round up all of the operatives.”
“And don’t forget the children,” CJ said. “They’ll need special handling. They’ll be well on their way to being brainwashed.”
“If you’re going with Charlie, I am, too,” Grace said.
“I can’t get everyone in. I can only bring a plus one,” Charlie said. “Roger will be my plus one.” She turned to him with a frown. “We’ll need to have you fitted immediately with a tuxedo.”
“I have one, ma’am,” Arnold said.
Her eyes widened. “You do?” Then her brow dipped. “Why did I not know this about you, Roger?”
He straightened to his full height, shoulders back and chest puffed out like the military man he’d once been. “Because you never asked.”
Charlie smiled. “Roger, you take such good care of me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“You’ll have to stop calling me ‘ma’am’ if you’re coming with me tonight.”
“Yes, Charlotte,” he said, his voice softer.
CJ hid a smile. She might not be an expert in the ways of the heart, but she could swear there was something there in Roger’s eyes. A flash of desire or longing? Or was CJ projecting her own feelings for Cole into those around her?
CJ sighed. Until they resolved the Trinity issue, she couldn’t have any kind of long-term relationship with anyone without putting them at risk. As much as she loved being around Cole, she’d have to cut the ties forming and leave. A heaviness settled on her chest. She hadn’t felt that kind of weight since she’d lost her parents.
Mack had risen and gone to the cabinets against the wall. One by one, he pulled out weapons, grenades, bulletproof vests and communications devices.
Jonah helped him organize and store them in a couple of lar
ge duffel bags.
“I’ll bring the SUV around to the front of the house,” Roger Arnold offered and left the room, climbing the stairs, his limp barely noticeable.
Charlie’s gaze followed him up the stairs, the corners of her mouth curling upward. “Arnold—Roger,” she corrected, “never ceases to surprise me. And we’ve known each other since I met my husband. He was in the SAS when the three of us met in a bar in London.” She smiled. “At first I was more attracted to Roger than John.” She pressed her hands to her chest. “There’s something about a man in uniform that makes a girl’s heart flutter.” She drew in a deep breath and let it out. “Alas, Roger deployed to some godforsaken place in Africa and John swept me off my feet.” She turned to CJ, her eyes misty with unshed tears. “I loved John with all my heart.”
CJ nodded, not knowing what to say to the woman. She had no experience with love. Her gaze went to Cole as he loaded rounds into magazines to be used in the weapons they would take. What would it be like to be loved by a man the way John had loved Charlie?
Dragging her gaze away, CJ squared her shoulders, grabbed a box of bullets and fit them into still more magazines. Though they weren’t going in with the intention of starting a fight, they might be forced to defend themselves and the children who’d been recruited by Trinity.
“The most important thing we have to be aware of is Trinity’s leader,” Cole said. “If he’s at the compound, we can’t let him escape.”
“True,” Declan agreed. “If it comes to a choice between losing him or engaging with the enemy...engage the enemy to save the children.”
CJ loaded more magazines. If they had to engage the enemy, they might be shooting teenagers and children. She prayed it didn’t come to that.
For the first time in a year, she had a chance at finding and neutralizing the leader of an organization that had ruined the lives of many children, including her life. They had to make this opportunity count. She didn’t know if she had the strength to continue a life of looking over her shoulder.
CJ wanted more. She wanted love and maybe a family of her own.
She’d never even considered children as part of her future, never saw them fitting in, so she’d not given the possibility any thought. Now, though, she realized there were many things she wanted that she’d simply refused to allow herself to contemplate as a member of Trinity and then as an escapee from their evil grasp.
But, yes, she wanted children, damn it. After all she’d been through, all she’d been trained to be, she hadn’t considered herself fit to be a mother. Hell, she’d thought she wasn’t fit to be the wife of a good man.
But now—now she had dreams.
Chapter Eleven
Cole rode in the middle row of seats of the SUV. Mack drove, Jack claimed shotgun and CJ sat beside Cole. Mustang sat in the backseat as they drove through late-evening DC traffic to the Leesburg airport outside of the city. Charlie’s connections had arranged for a helicopter to ferry them to a location close enough to the compound that they could set down in a field and hike in from there. Gus, who would meet them on the fenced perimeter, would wait to move in until they were all there.
The helicopter was a model used for sightseeing. The pilot was a former army helicopter aviator. He didn’t ask questions about the gear they brought on board in two large duffel bags. All he needed was the weights to balance the load and they were off, heading west farther into Virginia.
Where it had taken forty minutes for them to get from Charlie’s estate to Leesburg Executive Airport, it took less than thirty minutes for them to fly the distance from the airport to the landing site in the Virginia countryside.
Cole stared down at the traffic on the highway at a standstill in the evening rush hour and said a prayer of thanks for Charlie and her connections. It had taken Gus over an hour and a half to drive the same distance during the middle of the day, not at rush hour.
The pilot put down in the dog handler’s field after Jonah had called ahead to get permission. The helicopter and pilot would remain in the field until one of the team released him to leave. If someone ended up getting hurt, they might have to airlift him out to get medical attention—quicker than waiting for an ambulance.
Cole hoped that didn’t happen, but it was nice to know they had the helicopter as backup if they needed a quick getaway.
By the time they landed, the sun had just dropped below the horizon, casting the land into the gray shadow of dusk. They could see, but night would consume them quickly. The sooner they moved out, the better. Their night vision would adjust as the light faded.
Cole grabbed one of the bags and Mack took the other. They divided what was in them among the five members of the team, carrying an extra rifle for Gus who’d gone out with the drone and a handgun. Each person plugged the radio communications earbuds in their ears and buckled into bulletproof vests.
“How do we find Gus?” CJ asked.
“He’s got the drone and it’s wired with a GPS tracker.” Mack held up a tracking device. “I have him, as long as he’s still with the drone.”
As they took off through the woods, Cole dropped back behind Mack and Jack. Mustang brought up the rear.
Cole reached for CJ’s hand and held it as long as he could without tripping over branches and underbrush. Eventually, he was forced to let go. The darkness made it difficult to see what they were stepping on and into.
He wanted to ask her if she was all right, but the others would hear anything he had to say since they were all connected with the earbuds. He had to be satisfied that she was near him. Cole wasn’t sure it was a good idea for her to go back into the compound if it was the one where she’d trained. Being back was sure to ignite a firestorm of memories that could end up derailing her concentration.
By the time they reached Gus, darkness had settled in and the stars had come out. A few clouds scudded across the sky, blocking out some of the light, but they could see well enough by moonlight to move through the forest without use of flashlights.
They found Gus seated beneath a tree, the drone on the ground beside him. When he saw them coming, he rose to his feet. “I did what I could to recon the area, but without wire cutters, I couldn’t get past the fence without digging under.”
“What did you find?” Cole asked.
“First, I checked, and this facility is not owned or operated by any federal or local authorities. It’s private. The front gate has two sentries, each armed with AR-15 rifles. There’s a guard at the rear of the compound inside the fence and one on each side. All are armed. I couldn’t tell if the fence is designed to keep people out or in.”
“Both,” CJ answered.
Cole dug into his pocket, pulled out a pair of wire cutters and held them up. “Point us in the right direction and we’ll get this party started.”
Gus led them down a ravine and up the other side, over a ridge and back down to a fence that rose up out of the forest floor, eight feet high. It was topped with two more feet of concertina wire.
“The guard is a couple hundred yards to the south,” Gus whispered.
“Cutting the wire is likely to make noise,” Cole warned.
“We’ll have to be ready in case he comes to check it out,” Gus said.
Mack turned south. “Gus and I will keep an eye out for movement.”
“Mustang and I will take the opposite direction,” Jack said, “in case our man on the back side of the compound comes snooping.”
CJ stood guard on Cole while he snipped through the chain-link fence one link at a time. He was glad she had his back. Standing at the fence, he would be easy to spot should anyone come anywhere close on the other side.
When he had cut enough of the links that a person his size could fit through, he stopped. Slipping the wire cutters into his pocket, he held the flap of fence to the side for CJ to go through first.
“We’
re in,” he said into his headset.
Mack and Gus returned to his location and ducked through.
“We took care of our guard. He won’t be warning the others of our arrival.”
Mustang and Jack showed up at that moment. “We took out our guy. He won’t be a problem. And we circled around to the far side and knocked out the one over there.”
“Which leaves the two on the gate,” Gus said.
After everyone else made it through, Mack held the fence for Cole. When they were all on the other side, they moved out slowly, staying low and clinging to the shadows.
Gus and Mack led the way based on the information they’d gleaned from the images the drone had collected. Treading quietly, they eventually could see several long buildings with corrugated tin roofs and clapboard walls.
“Dormitories,” CJ whispered. “This is where they brought us. The one on the right is for the younger kids. The one on the left is for the teenagers. It’s all coming back to me. In the center is a two-story house. It’s the headquarters building. It’s where the instructors live and dole out punishment.”
“Get down,” Mack said into the headset. “Someone’s coming.”
Several men carrying five-gallon jugs rounded the corners of the dormitories, shaking the contents of the jugs up against the sides of the buildings.
The scent of gasoline filled the air.
“That’s gasoline. They’re soaking the walls,” CJ said. “They’re going to burn the dormitories.” She leaped to her feet and started toward the long buildings.
Cole dived after CJ, tackled her to the ground and covered her body with his, praying the men with the gasoline jugs hadn’t seen her.
“They’ll kill them,” she wheezed, barely able to breathe beneath the weight of the former marine on her back.
“We don’t know if there are any people in those dorms,” Cole whispered in her ear. “And we don’t know if those men are armed.”
Mack and Jack slipped through the trees, darting from shadow to shadow until they were close enough to the men slinging gasoline all over the buildings.